Other Golf Iron Shot Options (Video) - by Pete Styles
Other Golf Iron Shot Options (Video) - by Pete Styles

So if we’ve now discussed how important it is to get really good ball striking on your irons, lets look at some different varieties of shots, where it is equally as important to still get really good ball striking and how I can help you achieve that. The first shot would be a consideration of how we would hit a punch shot. Now punch shot is going to be a low shot, its going to fly low, its going to fly quite a far away and hopefully its going to have a little bit of spin when it lands on the green as well.

So punch shot could be quite useful on a very windy day, we want to punch it underneath the wind or even if you are slightly in the tress, and you need to hit the ball down under the trees and get it going out onto a green. Now punch shot can be played in quite a simple fashion of just moving the golf ball position back in your stance, so if we bring the ball back in the stance, but try and keep the hands forwards and keep the body weight forwards, that should encourage you just to have such a nice descending angle of attack, which will hit the ball a little bit lower. Also having the hands forwards takes this much loft off the golf club, that encourages it to go lower as well. So we want to have the ball back, the hands forwards, important that we don’t lean back and trying to scoop this, so keep the body weight on the left side, it will punch down on the golf ball, down under the wind, down under the trees. Take a few balls to the driving range and practice hitting those punch shots – I very rarely see people practice these variety shots enough, quite happy to hit drives and standard wedges and standard irons, people don’t practice these variety shots, but we’ve got a lot of them on the golf course. The next different sort of variety shot I would give you would be a ball that’s sort of down in the heavy rough, ball sitting down and in the thick rough. How do we play this shot out of here with a good ball stroke? Well a lot of it is played very similar to how we play punch short because we still want the steep angle of attack and they are hitting down, we play with plenty of loft, so pitching wedge or even sand wedge after the long grass. The one additional extra I would do is grip the golf ball tighter, I would have a better hold on the club, because as the club comes in and hits the long grass, the long grass is going to try and twist the golf club and move the club head, if you are holding on to it really tightly, you'll fight through that glass better, cut through the glass better and still play the golf ball out quite nicely. So the ball back in the stance, in the long grass, body weight nicely ahead, hands ahead, loads of grip pressure, I'm punched down, I’m really committed to hitting down into that. And the one last variety shot, where we still want really good ball striking with our irons is played from a fairway bunker. Generally a fairway bunker is different to a green side bunker, and it doesn’t have a big leap on it. So the hope is that we can hit the slightly longer iron out of the bunker, generate more distance and still feel like we can get it up somewhere near to the green, so we might take it seven or a six iron. But different to a green side bunker we don’t want to hit this shot fat or heavy, we want to hit this where we get the club quite close to the back of the golf ball, knick the golf ball off fairly cleanly and hit it out a long way from the fairway bunker, with a relatively clean contact. So to achieve that we will have the ball around about center, but we are going to stay a little bit tall here, we are not going to sink down and hit into the sand like we would do in a normal bunker shot, we are going to stay nice and tall, try and play the ball off quite cleanly without thumping down into the ground. And again a bit of practice, the bunker shot, the ball is in the heavy rough, and the punch shot, practice those three, and see how that improves your ball striking on those variety shots. 2015-11-04

So if we’ve now discussed how important it is to get really good ball striking on your irons, lets look at some different varieties of shots, where it is equally as important to still get really good ball striking and how I can help you achieve that. The first shot would be a consideration of how we would hit a punch shot. Now punch shot is going to be a low shot, its going to fly low, its going to fly quite a far away and hopefully its going to have a little bit of spin when it lands on the green as well.

So punch shot could be quite useful on a very windy day, we want to punch it underneath the wind or even if you are slightly in the tress, and you need to hit the ball down under the trees and get it going out onto a green. Now punch shot can be played in quite a simple fashion of just moving the golf ball position back in your stance, so if we bring the ball back in the stance, but try and keep the hands forwards and keep the body weight forwards, that should encourage you just to have such a nice descending angle of attack, which will hit the ball a little bit lower.

Also having the hands forwards takes this much loft off the golf club, that encourages it to go lower as well. So we want to have the ball back, the hands forwards, important that we don’t lean back and trying to scoop this, so keep the body weight on the left side, it will punch down on the golf ball, down under the wind, down under the trees. Take a few balls to the driving range and practice hitting those punch shots – I very rarely see people practice these variety shots enough, quite happy to hit drives and standard wedges and standard irons, people don’t practice these variety shots, but we’ve got a lot of them on the golf course. The next different sort of variety shot I would give you would be a ball that’s sort of down in the heavy rough, ball sitting down and in the thick rough.

How do we play this shot out of here with a good ball stroke? Well a lot of it is played very similar to how we play punch short because we still want the steep angle of attack and they are hitting down, we play with plenty of loft, so pitching wedge or even sand wedge after the long grass. The one additional extra I would do is grip the golf ball tighter, I would have a better hold on the club, because as the club comes in and hits the long grass, the long grass is going to try and twist the golf club and move the club head, if you are holding on to it really tightly, you'll fight through that glass better, cut through the glass better and still play the golf ball out quite nicely.

So the ball back in the stance, in the long grass, body weight nicely ahead, hands ahead, loads of grip pressure, I'm punched down, I’m really committed to hitting down into that. And the one last variety shot, where we still want really good ball striking with our irons is played from a fairway bunker. Generally a fairway bunker is different to a green side bunker, and it doesn’t have a big leap on it. So the hope is that we can hit the slightly longer iron out of the bunker, generate more distance and still feel like we can get it up somewhere near to the green, so we might take it seven or a six iron.

But different to a green side bunker we don’t want to hit this shot fat or heavy, we want to hit this where we get the club quite close to the back of the golf ball, knick the golf ball off fairly cleanly and hit it out a long way from the fairway bunker, with a relatively clean contact. So to achieve that we will have the ball around about center, but we are going to stay a little bit tall here, we are not going to sink down and hit into the sand like we would do in a normal bunker shot, we are going to stay nice and tall, try and play the ball off quite cleanly without thumping down into the ground. And again a bit of practice, the bunker shot, the ball is in the heavy rough, and the punch shot, practice those three, and see how that improves your ball striking on those variety shots.